Is Politico sure that Donald Trump is that influential? Or could it be that the riots accompanying Black Lives Matter protests, while not necessarily committed by the same people, are turning off Americans? Or maybe the gradual exposure pf their hardline Marxist agenda, including the destruction of the nuclear-family model, could be a buzzkill for most Americans who like the idea of raising their own children.

Naaah. Must be Trump:

President Donald Trump has spent weeks attacking the Black Lives Matter movement, and it’s moving the polls — though not necessarily in a way that boosts his electoral chances.

Voters’ favorable views of the Black Lives Matter movement has dropped by 9 percentage points since June, including a 13-point dip among Republicans, according to new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. The shift comes after the recent police shooting of another Black man: Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., last week. …

The dip in support for Black Lives Matter, reflected across multiple polls in recent weeks, doesn’t come as a surprise to activists nor Democratic pollsters who expected Republican backlash to the movement’s newfound support. Favorability for Black Lives Matter dropped from 61 percent support in June to 52 percent now, according to the POLITICO/Morning Consult poll conducted Friday through Sunday.

“This is the direct effect of the strategy of Donald Trump and Fox News,” said veteran Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher. “The movement to a certain extent, over the last month or so, had been losing ground in controlling the narrative.”

Curiously, the same poll shows Donald Trump’s approval rating at 42/57. Does that sound like someone who can knock ten or so points off of the approval rating of a social movement? Let’s call that unlikely, at least.

The problem with this take is that it’s disconnected from other data in the same poll. For instance, the Kenosha protests and protesters get plurality support (49% and 45%, respectively), but the police in Kenosha get majority support (55%). The messaging from BLM to reduce or eliminate policing goes right up against that support for law enforcement.

Then, take into consideration how respondents feel about BLM’s top policy goal. Only 19% of respondents think policing needs a “complete overhaul,” as BLM advocates and agitates to impose. Almost twice as many (34%) think policing needs only minor reforms or no reforms at all. Given that “defund the police” has been BLM’s banner demand for the last three months, it seems clear that they aren’t winning that argument — and that the demand itself is much more likely a cause for their diminishing support.

In fact, I’d guess that polling on BLM might overestimate their support, at least in terms of their politics. It’s fashionable at the moment to express support for them in a superficial way, to the point of perhaps having reluctance to express disapproval publicly. The 52% support for the group doesn’t match up well with the 19% support for their top policy goal, which suggests that the support expressed here is of the cheap-virtue-signaling kind. The more that their radical agenda and rhetoric get exposed, the quicker that will burn off, regardless of what Donald Trump has to say about it.